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Summary of lectures of the learning brain. Elective or part of course 'Pedagogische Wetenschappen'
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The Learning BrainLecture 1: Educational Neuroscience
The mind-body problem:
- Aristotle: Heart is where everything happened, and the brain is a kind of radiator. Look to the
heart for thoughts
- Now people think the other way around.
→Mind-Brain problem
- Dualism: (Descartes)
o Mind is immortal and nonphysical and brain is mortal an physical. They are different
things that interact through the pineal gland
o If body dies your mind lives on
- Dual aspect theory: Spinoza
o Mind and brain are different levels of explanation for the same thing, but are not
different kind of things
o Different ways of looking at the same thing
- Reductionism:
o Even though cognitive and mind based concepts are useful if you want to understand
mind better, at some point we will replace them with more biological construct.
o In time will understand better and number of terms and scientific fields to use will be
reduced.
o Psychology is all biology that we don’t understand.
o Theories about cognition and behavior will eventually be replaced by purely
biological constructs.
Limits based on the state of your brain
Background:
- Enormous growth of knowledge on brain function and development
- Basis of changes in education, understanding of learning problems and interventions
- Important build bridges between cognitive neuroscience and education, because of the
benefit. Help to understand how the brain learns
Challenging to build bridges because you study different levels of analysis. Rules about education are
made at a high level, which is very different from the neurons. This is complicated, because the low
level doesn’t necessarily translate to a high level.
Looking at the level of the brain in this course:
- Context – if we understand the brain better, we can figure out the function/behaviour
- Creating theories – about learning and how we should design education → insight in
mechanisms
- New hypotheses – about what interventions should or could target.
→Integrated respons. Need people from the education background – is collaborative
Neuromyths:
- Many misconceptions about what we know and do not know about brain function related to
learning
- ‘brain based’ recommendations to education sometimes good, sometimes unrealistic
,Use all of our brain – this is why brain damage is so devastating
Brain regions are active even when a person is ‘doing nothing’. While not all of the brain is active at
once, several brain areas are at work for any given activity.
Most neurons are formed before birth. However, the brain remains flexible because of changes in
connections between neurons. In some areas new cells are created:
- Hippocampus (creating new memories)
- Olfactory bulb (processing smell)
The ‘Mozart effect’ – Study students who listened to Mozart scored higher on a cognitive task
compared to students who did not listen to Mozart. However, the effect lasted 15 minutes, and has
never really been replicated.
However, learning to play an instrument does have long term positive effects on cognitive skills.
Improves concentration, confidence and coordination.
Brain recovery can be possible but depends on location and severity of the damage. If you have mild
damage, usually only results in temporary problems. Following substantial damage sometimes
different areas can take over functions. Recovery depends on the age at which the damage occurred.
New borns are more likely to recover and deal with damage than older people
Drinking alcohol in moderation is not necessarily damaging, but chronic alcohol abuse or binge
drinking are. Alcohol does always negatively impact the way the brain functions.
Games can help you learn words and develop specific skills, but they do not have a generalized
positive effect on the way your brain works. So far there is insufficient support for the idea that
‘brain training’ programs focus on basic cognitive skills have a long term and important effect.
Approximately half of primary and secondary school teachers believe in neuromyths. Research has
shown that teachers with an interest in brain research are more likely to fall for such myths.
Brain topography:
The cortex consists of 2 hemispheres that are connected through the Corpus Collosum.
Cortex (=Bark) outer layer of grey matter.
,Neuron:
Dendrite: receive input from other neurons
Axon: Send information to other cells.
Electrical signal is traveling down the neuron. In the synaps the
neurotransmitters are released.
Want signal to travel fast and efficiently → myelin
Myelin is a fatty substance that isolates the electric signal that
passes through the axon. Is part of a cell that is wrapped around
the axon.
More myelin = better signal transfer.
Brodmann areas: Different types of cells, slight differences in
neurons. He created a map and numbered the places/cells.
Gyrus: Ridges; bumby parts
Sulcus: Furrows
Description based on Gyri and Sulci helps to demarcate certain parts of the brain such as lobes and
divisions.
Not all brains are the same
Occipital lobe: Located at the back of the brain
- Function: Process, integrate and interpret visual information
- E.g. Important in reading
Temporal lobe: Located at the sides of the brain behind the temples/area
- Hearing
- Organization/comprehension of language
- Memory (storing and retrieving memories)
Parietal lobe: In position between all other lobes
- Somatosensory perception
- Integration of information in different modalities
- Spatial awareness
- Mathematics
- Rubber hand experiment
Frontal lobe: At the front of the brain and is relatively large in humans
- Executive functions
- Decision-making/reasoning
- Memory retrieval
- Personality
, Primary motor cortex: Allows you to move your body
Broca’s area: Important for speech
Orbitofrontal cortex: Emotional related networks and cognitive related networks
Prefrontal cortex: Frontal part of frontal cortex.
- Human cognition
Localizing functions depends on type of function how easy it is to do that.
Relatively easy for motor and sensory functions, more difficult for higher order cognitive functions.
→Somatosensory strip & Motor strip
Paper week 1: Carew, T. J. & Magsamen, S. H. (2010). Neuroscience and education: An ideal
partnership for producing evidence-based solutions to guide 21st century learning
- International/national reports:
o Level of math & language is decreasing (PISA)
o Number of children with academic difficulties
increases
- Educational neuroscience/mind, brain & education: at
the crossroads of neuroscience, developmental
psychology, cognitive science, and educational science.
- First step is to create a common language.
- Need translational research → multidisciplinary
research that aims to improve education
- Educational neuroscience/mind, brain & education
o Mixing the different fields of research
o Eventually develop more effective teaching
methods and curricula & influence education policy
- New teaching methods & interventions
o Based in theory
o Proven effective in empirical research
- Have to do research at different levels; look at all the sides
and then come to a ‘conclusion’ – multi level interpretation
Educational neuroscience:
- Neuroscientific findings can provide a context for understanding behaviour
o For example the mirror mistake children make d = b → letters are different from all
the other things you encounter, for a lot of other things the orientation is not
important. Just have to learn how to deal with the letters.
- Helps with the creation of theories on learning and educational design:
o Insight in mechanism: Not if a specific intervention works, but how it works
o New insights in existing theoretical controversies: Is one theory biologically more
plausible?
o A lot of data (brain regions, time-courses): Can help in evaluating different theories
of behaviour
Goal: Education that fits with the way the brain processes information
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